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Warnings from AI insiders about the risks the technology poses to humanity triggered a fresh debate in Silicon Valley this week. Some technology executives now question whether these warnings reflect genuine concern or serve as a tool to attract investors.
The debate intensified after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and warned that people building advanced AI were taking catastrophic risks.
His comments surfaced at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco, where industry leaders, investors and executives openly clashed over how seriously to treat the warnings.
Coxon said people working on advanced AI were gambling with our lives, and Anthropic team lead Evan Hubinger echoed that fear on X, estimating more than a 10% chance AI could wipe out humanity within a decade.
Grindr chief executive George Arison pushed back hard, calling the stance an ‘anti-civilizational worldview’ and confirming he told his engineers to stop using Anthropic's tools.
Investor Brad Gerstner dismissed Coxon's warning as ‘ridiculous hyperbole,’ while Hugging Face chief executive Clement Delangue compared asking Coxon about AI risk to asking an air conditioning technician about climate change. NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang rejected the warnings entirely during the same event.
Both Gerstner and Delangue softened their stance after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay calling for a slowdown in AI development.
Also read: Anthropic Researcher Walks Away from AI Race, Warns ‘AI Could Kill Us’
The clash comes as Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for what could become record-setting public listings, adding a financial layer to the safety debate.
Senator Bernie Sanders co-sponsored a bill called the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, arguing that humanity could lose control of the technology.
President Donald Trump downplayed extinction fears, saying his bigger concern is losing the AI race to China.
Anthropic also disclosed that its systems recently stopped threat actors attempting to misuse its technology for bioweapons development and cyber-espionage, adding further weight to the ongoing argument over how much oversight AI truly needs.
